


Some Words for Chloe Price

by spacemagic



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: CW: Death, Episode 5 Spoilers, F/F, Poetry, Polarised Spoilers, Slam Poetry, Spoken Word, angry queers being angry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:12:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5156549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemagic/pseuds/spacemagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I performed this at a slam night last week as part of a local queer festival. This is a poem in dedication to Chloe Price, as well as a more direct response to the ending of Life is Strange. I've included a recording of me reading it aloud - it's a spoken word poem, so is meant to be heard as much as read.</p><p>It is angry and sad and heartfelt. It is full of spoilers and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Words for Chloe Price

 

[Some Words For Chloe Price [recording]](http://vocaroo.com/i/s1qUGbXeIHzh)

 

 

Her name was Chloe

 

Chloe was the shock of blue hair tucked under a beanie pinched from the dollar store.

 

Chloe was the angry tattoos snaking out of a leather jacket, breaking half the workplace dress regulations.

 

Chloe was - in her own words - white gutter trash,  
  
that patched-up punk from the junkyard,  
all broken glass and bruised knuckles,  
the beat- up baseball bat you threw out when you realised you couldn’t make the big league.  
she was torn photographs, dead memories crunched up in a trash-compactor, she was the life in the remains, the butterflies in the brains, the screaming in the dark room, she was graffiti,  
defacing, embracing,  
red and bold,  
diagonal lines,  
the ‘fuck you’, the ‘fuck this’,  
over the official record, the scored-out small print of zeros and noughts that trailed across her pages, her written records, her unpaid healthcare bills, her red-stamped RENT DUE, the contracts that cut her up,  
  
red and bold, bought and sold.

 

 

She was that sharp breath of fresh air, that space, that nothing – but the gas pedal, grumbling, the clank of grubby dimes she’d pulled from the back of a couch, the slight, sudden hot touch of sore hands and bodies, shaken – that sailed along the cliff-edge of Washington coast, the seventy miles an hour blitz of rain and the thunder and wind,  
in a banged-up truck on siphoned gas, stolen cash, no time.

 

She was the question:  
how hopelessly lost would I be if I let go of her?  
could I let go?  
should I?

She was the answer: the flash of a smile under a broken windscreen,  
the refusal to be battered by the storm of unfilled forms, to be worn, tied, or collared by the weathered ‘way of things’, or swallowed whole into the sea;

she was the trail of kisses, fingers curling, the soft bites down my neck, that said  
‘no, I will – I am’; the determination to be;

 

 

 

I watched her die three times. Three bullets, three lives. I ripped out the pages and tried to rewrite her but the ink had dried. It was in print.

 

 

This is a eulogy  
for Chloe, for Max,  
for all the dead lesbians whose blood stains the page

This is a eulogy  
for the queer women, the dykes, the depraved, craved, need-to-be-saved bisexuals,  
who have been buried by paper and ink.

This is a eulogy for all the women who ever loved women – who are left unwritten.

 

For all those cheap, dead-beat artists, those late night dreamers, those self-proclaimed prophets of starlit romance: we were wrought only as their cannonballs, fiery shipwrecks in a storm, whirlwind romance and whirlwind ruin – because those dreamers could not dream, they could not imagine, they could not comprehend, that we lived and breathed and swore and believed – hands touching, hair swept in the breeze – with sunlit smiles and caresses that tore at the page.

They could not imagine that our love is not a whirlwind.

Our love is not the oncoming storm, not the dull toll of the funeral bell. Our love is not white lilies and coffins.  
No handkerchiefs, no daisies, no cold earth, no cold hands.

Our love is not the tears that drain from the page, our love is not the cheers that break the stage; our love is not the death of tragedy;  
it is not for an audience, it is not for you.

 

 

Our love is not me, debris, and the world that lay empty, the shore slick with bodies.

 

Our love is beyond your words.

Our love is warm, it is hopeful, it breathes, defiant, and it belongs to us.


End file.
